"Wrestling with the Angels, the senior sermon of Cristopher Robinson, Class of 2005 from the Diocese of El Camino Real, delivered in Christ Chapel on October 21, 2004

Genesis 32:3-8,22-30

Jacob sent messengers before him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom, instructing them, "Thus you shall say to my lord Esau: Thus says your servant Jacob, `I have lived with Laban as an alien, and stayed until now; and I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male and female slaves; and I have sent to tell my lord, in order that I may find favor in your sight.'"

The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, "We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him." Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed; and he divided the people that were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two companies, thinking, "If Esau comes to the one company and destroys it, then the company that is left will escape."

The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the day is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." Then the man said, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved."

In my whole life, I've been involved in exactly one wrestling match. It was a little over twenty years ago, on a hot, sticky Friday afternoon in the Spring. The reason I remember it was a Friday is that Fridays were the day that the football team got to take a break from our usual training regimen and do fun things. We went outside, about 50 of us, and gathered somewhere near the middle of the field. We all took off our shoes and socks, and formed a circle, a circle of boys dressed in identical gray t-shirts and shorts. We took turns, two by two, stepping into the ring of our teammates, and, as the linebackers coach said it, "rasslin." No rules, no holds barred, no fancy pins or keeping score-one fall only to determine the winner.

There's something…primal…about wrestling. When you wrestle, there's nothing between you and your opponent. No tools, no equipment, nothing to separate you from the undeniable reality of your own physical existence. Nothing but you and your own guts and sinews against another person and their guts and sinews, and the only point is to physically subdue the other person and pin them helpless. It's something so vivid and real that I can still remember that wrestling match 20 years ago. I remember the brightness of the afternoon sun, and the smell of the grass under our toes as we circled around, sizing each other up. We ducked and dodged and slapped at each other for a minute, feinting and weaving, and then all of a sudden rushed together in a sweaty tangle of straining muscles and flailing limbs. I remember the surprising strength of his grip. The slick skin of his arms and legs and chest as I tried desperately to find a handhold, and the scratchy feel of his hair on my cheek, as we lunged back and forth, arms locked around each other, trying to throw the other off balance.

Dear ones, did you ever wonder what we're doing here?

Today's first reading tells us a story from our heritage, one of those stories that's supposed to tell us something about who we are as God's people. But it's a story so far in the past, so deep in the murky waters of our history, that if we view it through our historical-critical lenses we must conclude that we know absolutely nothing about it with certainty, not even the existence of Jacob himself. Well, it seems to me that the obvious reason why this story has been handed down for centuries, passed on and told and retold for over a hundred generations, is that the story of Jacob is in fact an allegory illustrating the journey of seminary students.

First of all, no self-respecting seminary student would claim to be particularly pristine of character before stepping onto these hallowed grounds. Some of us will even admit to being scoundrels in our past lives. Like Jacob, we are far from our homes and kin. We have been given a vision of the house of God, and have been invited to climb the exalted ladder of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, even unto the right hand of God. And it is surely true that we have been forced to work for long years for our taskmasters: cruel, manipulative, untrustworthy people who require of us twice as much work as is absolutely necessary to obtain the prize that we seek. We anticipate, or at least we hope, that we will be permanently marked by our encounter with God, so that all can see our pious limp for the rest of our days.

Well, maybe there's some truth in that reading.

Perhaps instead the truth is that Jacob does not really wrestle with God. Maybe instead the mysterious figure in the story is in fact Esau, Jacob's older twin brother. After all, when they meet the next morning, Jacob says to Esau, "seeing your face is like seeing the face of God." Esau comes alone, at night, and in true John Wayne fashion, mano a mano, Jacob and Esau settle their differences. And Jacob wins. Maybe this story tells us that what we are all about is power over other people. Maybe we're here because it's a subtle kind of power we seek, the power of the shaman, the witch doctor.

Well, maybe there is some truth in that reading.

Or maybe it's more subtle than that -- maybe Jacob spends all night long on the banks of the river wrestling with himself. Maybe what we are about is, in the end, self-actualization. Jacob the trickster wants to cross back into the land of his ancestors, but he must first confront his childhood-the times when he fought with his brother Esau, the times he deceived his family. Maybe Jacob struggles with the fundamental nature of who he is. He knows that the virile, hairy, masculine, uncouth Esau is the one loved by his father, and he has, in the past, pretended to be something he is not. Now, on the border of his own land, the border of self-worth, he struggles with his own identity. To face old wounds, to fold his past into the fabric of his life, to be completely therapeutically whole -- "To thine own self be true," just like it says somewhere in the Bible, I'm sure. Maybe the center of our calling is to wrestle with our own past, to be truth-tellers, and then, limping like Nouwen's wounded healer, spend our lives helping other people achieve wholeness of being.

Maybe there is some truth in that reading.

Maybe instead we are to read this story as one dealing fundamentally with oppression. After all, Jacob is the younger twin trapped in a patriarchal system. He has no birthright, and must not be judged for the deception that he perpetrates against an oppressive system. He has been forced to work for those in control of the wealth and power twice as hard as his original contract called for. God wants Jacob to succeed; God has even given Jacob a vision of the house of God. But to claim that vision, Jacob must wrest power from those who hold it. Perhaps our identity is only about the struggle for justice, and our calling is fundamentally to force the powers that be to share power. "Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto: in God is our trust."

Maybe there is some truth in that reading.

Or… maybe… this story reminds us that God is not an idea, not a cause, not a truth that we hold self-evident. Maybe this story tells us about the God who shows us a great vision of heaven, and then, to make that blessing happen, is willing to meet us where we are, to meet us in a sweaty tangle of straining muscles and flailing limbs.

Maybe, when all else is stripped away, we are here because God's ultimate expression of love is solid, real, incarnate: Mary's boy from Nazareth. One who knows sweat, and sore muscles, and joy, and pain, and laughter, and love, and death, and life. This is the God we serve, the God we cling to, the God we proclaim. The one who blesses us and marks us and names us as God's own:

Isra-El.

the people who wrestle with God.